THE

ECLECTIC REVIEW,

FOR MAY, 1813.

Art. 1. The Expediency maintained of continuing the System, by which the Trade and Government of India are regulated; By Robert Grant, Esq. Royal 8vo. pp. 424. Black and Co. 1813.

WE have chosen this work as the subject of our present observations, as well because it comes forth with greater pretensions, as, on account of the connections of the author, it will probably excite more of the public attention, than most of the productions arising from the present crisis of the East India Company's affairs.

Mr. Grant being the son of the late Chairman of the Court of Directors, takes, as our readers will naturally anticipate, a very different view of the question between freedom and restriction, between favours to a few, and equal dealing to all, from that which we have endeavoured to recommend to the public. As Mr. Grant shares with the few in the benefits of the restriction, he is, at least by association of opinions and affections, a strenuous friend and admirer of that restriction.

Whatever he has produced in the shape of evidence, in support of his opinions, we have examined with great care, and having no interest to bias our mind, in regard to the subject, we have, we think, considered what he has said, with fairness and impartiality. The result is that our conviction remains the same; for in our opinion, Mr. Grant has not produced a single argument which we have not already answered, or which has not many times been answered by others.

What a regard to truth, and the interests of the community at large, which are, doubtless, preferable to the interests of the East India Company, has thus induced us to state, will not, we hope, be construed into even a distant expression of disrespect to Mr VOL. IX. 2 M

Grant. Of all men who have written, or may write, upon this subject, as he was the most obnoxious to certain prejudices, they ought in him to meet with the greatest indulgence. He imbibed, almost with his earliest nutriment, a set of principles respecting India; and as was very natural, taking for granted, without investigating, the truth of these principles, the whole force of his mind, and even a great part of his studies, have turned on the means of supporting them.

That Mr. Grant should be involved in this too common and too natural predicament, cannot excite any surprise. From the bias of early erroneous prejudices, the greatest men indeed have rarely been altogether exempt. In consequence of an unhappy turn of this sort, Sir Thomas Moore, with all his excellence, moral and intellectual, remained a papist, or a monopolist in religious privileges, after the light of Protestantism and of freedom had dawned upon his native land, and opened to its glorious influence, the eyes of a great portion of his countrymen. What else made Lord Clarendon and Dr. Johnson, men of unquestionable honesty and great talents, advocates of the doctrines that terminate in absolute power, and the enemies of those doctrines that form the basis of good government, and thereby of social happiness. How the pertinacity, with which we retain the principles affectionately embraced in early life, fortifies itself, if it has attracted the attention of the metaphysician, is little understood by the men of the world. As objects affect the eye only when it is turned towards them, so evidence affects the mind only when it makes it the object of its thoughts. But in consequence of having the affections engaged in favour of any opinion, the mind turns away from the evidence which is contrary to the current of the affections, and dwells with delight upon what is agreeable to them. Hence the proofs on the one side are all carefully collected in the mind, viewed in their most favourable light, and minutely and frequently reconsidered: thus at last they make the strongest possible impression. The proofs on the other side, being all unwelcome, whenever they obtrude themselves, are dismissed as soon as possible; the mind gives them a hasty glance, and passes with rapidity to something more agreeable. Only so inach of the evidence in favour of what is disliked as obtrudes itself, being noticed at all, it is no wonder that unless in these rare and happy cases, in which, by its own strength, or by fortunate circumstances, the mind is rescued from this partial tract, it should to no purpose be presented with an accumulation of the highest probabilities.

Mr. Grant's arguments, as they are not new, so they are not very numerous. He has selected three or four, those, of

Course, which appeared to him the most potent, and by means of these, with that faculty of dilatation, in which, if we may judge by the present performance, he has few rivals, he has contrived to fill a volume of considerably more than the ordinary size. We shall follow him pretty closely in his track.

He tells us, that the present government of the company is excellent, and that what is excellent ought not to be changed. This is the first of his arguments. Whoever is acquainted with the history of the successive changes, by which the condition of society has been meliorated, will immediately recognize a very old acquaintance. Hardly one of those improvements can be specified, against which this very engine has not been worked. In fact, it has always been applicable. Society has always been enjoying more or less of happiness; it was therefore always possible to say, that the existing institutions were productive of happiness, and on that account that they ought not to be changed. It has further almost always happened, that each society was enjoying, at the moment of change, almost as much happiness as it was acquainted with; therefore "that its institutions were excellent, and ought not to undergo any change," was an argument that must operate with effect. In this juncture it is almost always something new after which the society is aspiring. The case, therefore, lies always open to the never-neglected pretext, that the present happiness, which for the occasion is exaggerated as far as words will go, is about to be placed in jeopardy, or totally destroyed, for an advantage which is no better than imaginary. Hence for almost all the improvement which human society has ever made, we are indebted to the contempt with which mankind have occasionally been induced to treat this argument; and had it been found possible to give it an uniform dominion over the human mind, the race must have continued for ever sunk in the lowest stage of barbarism. The argument is, therefore, a stale and a mischievous fallacy.

Our author writes about it to a prodigious length. He first gives us a long description of the imperfections of the Mogul government, on which, we own, it is not very easy to exaggerate; and of the miseries of the people, to which these imperfections gave occasion. As far as the illustration of this topic goes, the author is entitled to great praise. He shews a considerable share of knowledge upon the subject; and had he spared us a multitude of his words, and less frequently shocked our taste by the vanity of ornament, a vanity which, among the cloud of fine writers, we think he carries nearly to the most tiresome excess, we should have read this part of his

-work, which, by the way, is a very large part, with no ordinary pleasure.

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After the hideous picture of the Mogul government, comes the delightful picture of the government of the Company. The reader will easily perceive that the dark shade was introduced to give the bright one a greater effect by the contrast. As a rhetorical artifice, this is unobjectionable. As an argument, however, it will not bear examination; for the question is not now between the Company's government and the old Mogul government; no one proposes to introduce the old Mogul government. The only comparison is, between the present government and the proposed modifications.

In presenting his high-coloured and flattering picture of the government of the Company, Mr. Grant gives a description of the different institutions both at home and abroad, of which that government consists. For this the public must feel itself indebted to him. Those who have not had occasion to make the subject a particular study, will here receive instruction. We know not any book which presents so good and intelligible an account of the machinery.

No sooner has Mr. Grant finished his picture, or rather, no sooner has he finished any single lineament, than he falls into a rapture on the beauty of the subject. It is not easy, he protests, to conceive any thing more admirable than the Company's government in India. He, indeed, expressly declines going so far as to declare it the standard of perfection. He allows there may be in it some faint traces of human infirmity. But this he is ready to maintain, that human wisdom and human virtues cannot proceed farther.

One or two very general observations on this head must suffice. When the comparison is made between the Mogul government and the Company's government, it is readily allowed that the latter is a prodigious improvement. But that no false impression may be conveyed by the comparison, it is necessary to add, that it was impossible it should not be an improvement. Without great improvements by the Company, the country could not have been retained. The Mogul government was brought by its imperfections to the very last stage of dissolution, and could not have existed five years longer, had an Englishman never been heard of in India. If an enlightened people had formed a new government for an unenlightened one, and had not made improvements, it would have been a new phenomenon in the history of the world. To compare the government of the Company with the wretched institutions of the Moguls, is rather a satyr than a panegyric. It is a suspicious symptom, to say the least, that a comparison se little flattering can be thought necessary. very